Design vs Production in the Solar Industry

The answer is both. Great designs are useless without the capacity to build them.

first the title then the separate question of the body. Production and installation characteristics are supposed to be considered in the design. A design that can not be produced or installed is useless (unless you design totally new production or installation methods and necessary tooling).

Companies need to compete in which ever niche they have the best capabilities to reduce cost while providing the best product. This means design should be adapted to suit the production/manufacturing capabilities of the companies and take advantage of them. However, design must always consider the end-use, else the product will lose ground in the market as users become disenchanted.

The question regarding as a product or as a process would need to be clarified, because it is both simultaneously.

Either without the other is useless. A perfect design that can't be manufactured is pointless. Manufacturing endless poor designs is as well. There really should be no separation of the two disciplines.

The incredible strength of the US is the immense market. While small economies cannot invest fully in extensive mass production because of the pay back risk, they can transfer ideas to the big world to have it produced very profitable.

The is much like the discussion of form vs function.

Manufacturing process design & product design are part of a larger process including: regulatory approval & marketing

any other considerations?

All the above entries have some truth in them, however I think they miss the point of the original question.

It is always possible (with hard work) to achieve a good balance between function, quality and timing in any design.

However, depending on the state of the industry, it may be beneficial to put higher priority on one of them, at the possible expense of the others.

For e.g., it is possible to drop prices (and improve quality) by buying simplified, standardized, less flexible machines of higher production capacity. If the technology changes then the companies who made such investments will be left with expensive, outdated, machines.

The same can be said about design improvements through expensive R&D, which may become redundant if price becomes the dominant factor.

This is the essence of the question: is the state of the technology stable enough that the focus should move to larger, more stable production lines? Or is the technology still changing significantly, necessitating more R&D work and flexibility in production investments?